The Bomber Jacket from First Page to Finally, Published!
It’s 2023 and Wow, Not One, But Two Book Contracts
At the end of Chapter 11 it was March of 2020. I had pretty much given up on the idea of finding an agent for The Bomber Jacket. And the Pandemic had shut down the world. By the end of the summer that year, I decided it was also time to shut down my sole-proprietor coaching and training business, The Power of Possibilities. I’d started it in 2011 after leaving my job as the training director of my county’s disability services agency, where I had worked for 23 years.
Time to retire from my most recent career. And maybe from work. And do what? In the fall of 2020, I started volunteering as a strategic planning consultant with my local county court system on their efforts to establish policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Most of our work was done on Zoom, though we eventually started meeting in person. That continued through July of 2023.
I also discovered a new hobby—watching Kdrama (Korean television with English subtitles on Netflix and eventually Viki, an Asian streaming service) which introduced me to Kpop, a music genre made famous by BTS. All of which I love to this day.
And I continued to write.
Just like I’ve always read several books at one time, I’ve always worked on several writing projects at one time. When the inspiration for one dissipates, I switch to another. In 2017 I began writing a contemporary rom-com fantasy about a novelist who inherits the family’s decrepit Victorian mansion. When she moves in, her characters show up on her doorstep and demand she rewrite the ending of their stories. I called it Write Me a New Life. It was completely different from any of my other books, because it was written in first person and tapped into my snarky sense of humor.
My friend Dani loved the story. She encouraged me to continue with it as we worked on The Bomber Jacket agent search. I was hesitant, because I’d always written “serious” books. She said the world needs lighthearted, fun stories as well. With her wise words in mind, I pressed on.
By the end of 2019, I had finished a draft of the second book in the series, The Norheim Writer’s B&B. I continued to rework the books, but realized that the second one needed to be the third in the series. So at the beginning of 2023, I started on a new second novel, Give My House a New Life.
Though I had given up on The Bomber Jacket, I wasn’t sitting around twiddling my thumbs.
In early 2023, my youngest sister, who writes as Riley Kilmore, had received the exciting news that her middle grade novel, Shay the Brave, had been accepted for publication by an independent publishing company, Wild Ink Publishing. Her first book contract. I was delighted for her.
In May she told me she’d asked Abigail Wild, a partner in the business, if she’d be willing to read one of my manuscripts, even though they had stopped accepting submissions for the year. Abby said sure. But which of my many manuscripts to submit?
My sister and I had attended a writer’s conference in September of 2022 at Shepherd University in West Virginia. Another of our sisters, D. W. Gregory, who is a playwright, was offering one of the workshops there. At that conference, I pitched Write Me a New Life and got a positive response from an agent, who asked me to send the first three chapters and a summary. She next asked for the entire manuscript. I was floating on air! But, once again, it turned into a rejection. But a very nice one. She encouraged me to continue to look for the “right” agent.
So, Write Me a New Life seemed like the best option to send Wild Ink Publishing. Yet, after careful consideration, I decided to give The Bomber Jacket one last try. On May 19, 2023 I emailed my cover letter, summary and first three chapters. The next day I got this emailed response: “Thank you for submitting to Wild Ink. I will read your submission shortly. Please feel free to reach out for updates. Thanks, Abby”
The days ticked by, but I knew about the long turnaround time this process takes. Because she had said it was okay to reach out for updates, on August 8, I sent a short email checking in. She replied the next day, August 9, at 8:48 a.m. that I was in the queue to be read next week. Six hours later she sent me a second email: “As luck would have it, my reader got to your submission today and loved it. She said she was blown away. We would like to request the full manuscript. Thank you!”
At that moment, I was with a group of former coworkers (five of us), who’d started having dinner in the early 1990s to support each other through our challenging social service careers. As each of us left the County and moved onto other workplaces and eventually retiring, we kept meeting, taking turns playing host. We were at my friend Jan Garrett’s house on August 9 and I’d randomly checked my email while waiting for Jan to cut the dessert.
I literally leapt up from my chair, jumping up and down, shouting, “Oh my, oh my, oh my,” or something like that. They thought I was having a medical emergency until I could clearly articulate my astonishing news. Then ten days later, I got an email that began, “We would like to offer you a traditional publishing contract for The Bomber Jacket. We enjoyed your submission immensely.”
The nearly 20-year journey from first page to a published novel had reached a milestone. Publication date: August 20, 2024.
And it emboldened me to ask two months later if I could submit additional manuscripts. Abby graciously said yes. In early November they offered me a contract for Jenna’s Journey: The Bronze Key, the first of my young adult fantasy series, to be published in August 2025.
Two book contracts within four months of each other!
It would be an understatement to say my head was spinning! And this was only the beginning of my new journey from book contract to book in hand, which continues in the next chapter.
